Virginia law bans anonymous remailers

[Bill Stewart]

Remailers aren't for falsifying email transmission information -
they're for concealing and deleting that information.
You're not pretending that your mail originates at foo.remailer.net,
you're just not telling anybody how it got there.
Even a nymserver doesn't do that - joepseudonym at foo.nymserver.net
isn't claiming to really live inside that mail server,
just to have an address on that server.
The features in Netscape and Eudora that let you pick your From: info
might count, and of course Fakemail and similar programs definitely would.

A more interesting issue is how this applies to AOL screen names,
and also how involved AOL was in the creation of the law,
since they're largely a Virginia-based company.

At 11:39 PM 03/28/2001 -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote:

>See also:
>http://www.politechbot.com/p-01862.html
>
>http://www.spamlaws.com/state/va.html
>§ 18.2-152.4. Computer trespass; penalty. B. It shall be unlawful for any 
>person knowingly to sell, give or otherwise distribute or possess with the 
>intent to sell, give or distribute software which (i) is primarily 
>designed or produced for the purpose of facilitating or enabling the 
>falsification of electronic mail transmission information or other routing 
>information; (ii) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use 
>other than to facilitate or enable the falsification of electronic mail 
>transmission information or other routing information; or (iii) is 
>marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with 
>that person's knowledge for use in facilitating or enabling the 
>falsification of electronic mail transmission information or other routing 
>information.
>
>